For the most part, banks have not been very good investments over the last 10 years. Of course, the financial crisis of 2008 did not help.

Bank stocks have made up a lot of lost ground since their lows set in March of 2009, however. Citigroup
C, -0.34%
has gone from a low of $9.00 per share back then to a current price of just over $37. Take away the one-for-10 split, however, and the stock has really gone from $0.90 to $3.70. While this sounds like a huge move, the fact of the matter is that Citigroup has been a terrible performer over the years.

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Data from Best Stocks Now app

As you can see from the above screenshot, the stock of Citigroup has gone backward by 17.8% per year over the last 10 years! Put another way, an investment of $10,000 turned into $1,157.68 — ouch! If I delivered performance like that as a professional money manager, I would not have too many clients. The stock was down 76% in 2008. So much for that widows and orphans argument.

Even with more favorable circumstances over the past three years, the stock has still gone the wrong way by 6.7% per year! Yes, the last 12 months have been good for the stock as it is up 31.3% since this time last year. That is little consolation, however.

Now we have a CEO, Vikrim Pandit, leaving the company, I am surprised that the shareholders did not help him pack his bags! Mr. Pandit also served on President Obama's jobs commission. I wonder how many jobs he created while at Citigroup?

Will the new boss be the same as the old boss? Only time will tell. Again, you could make the case that this has been a horrible decade for the banks. With the real estate bubble and crash, and the mess it left behind, how could any bank have performed well during those trouble times?

Let's take a look at a bank that has navigated just fine though the troubled waters of the last decade.

Let's compare the performance of this stock vs. the S&P 500 against Citigroup’s.

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Data from Best Stocks Now app

Banco Latinoamericano, which has its headquarters in Panama, has delivered its investors a total average return of 33% per year over the last 10 years. That same $10,000 that went down to $1,157 in Citigroup would have turned into $139,994.14. I think I will take what's behind door number two.

Over the last five years, this bank stock has delivered 8.9% of alpha per year to its happy investors. Over the last three years, investors have received an average of 11.8% points of alpha over the S&P 500.

Check out the last 12 months. The stock is up 37.5%, while the S&P 500 is up 18.8%. Now those are some serious performance numbers!

Anyone been to their shareholder meetings? I know it's a long drive, but I'll bet it is a lot happier crowd than that Citigroup crowd.

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